Category Archives: Newest Blogs (最新ブログ)

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) May 25, 2020 This year’s onions are close to harvest. I went through and pulled up a few (6.5kg) this morning. The sizes in this crop are smaller than usual due the odd weather patterns during the growing season and several bouts with downy mildew brought on by the fluctuating temperatures. タマネギ収穫が近づく 今年のタマネギの収穫が近い。今朝、少しだけ倒れたタマネギを抜いた（6.5kg)。 今回のタマネギは天候やヘド病の発生する気温の繰り返しによって例年より小さい。 *************** English novels by Billy Hammond published by AELS (AELS出版英語書籍リスト）   I. Majoh Gakuin and Hikari Juku – Japanese Witch Schools Trilogy 1. Majoh Gakuin & Hikari Juku – Japanese Witch Schools 2. Lost Witch (The second book) 3. Fate & Magic (The final book in the trilogy) II. Brindle – Scryer Extraordinaire Trilogy 1. Brindle – Scryer Extraordinaire 2. Brindle – Scryer Extraordinaire – Returns 3. Brindle – Scryer Extraordinaire – Challenges (The final book in the trilogy) III. Fantasy […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) May 24, 2020 Yesterday I received a request for a reading on a sofa via LINE. The woman who made the request was shopping at a used furniture shop with her married daughter and granddaughter. All three of them are quite psychically sensitive, but still haven’t developed their powers. According to her message, the price was very attractive and they were considering buying it, but they sensed something about it and decided to ask me to look at it. I looked at the photo and knew that the owner didn’t want to sell it. I got images of an empty house with clothes in the closets and spoiled food left in the refrigerator. It made me pretty certain that the sofa came from someone who’d skipped town to escape from debt and had probably been […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) May 22, 2020 Abe’s Mask Fiasco On April 1, 2020 PM Abe announced an insane plan to send packets of two cloth masks to every mailbox in Japan. As time passed, the people learned that the masks and subsequent distribution would cost 46.6 billion yen. Initial recipients of the masks revealed that they were too small for adults and that many were poorly sewn, moldy or dirty. This necessitated a recall and checking of the masks. My cloth masks arrived on May 18th. As I had expected, the masks are too small, so I’m planning to donate them to the after-school classroom teacher at the elementary school once my aikido classes resume. Had Abe been a bit more in touch with Japan’s citizens, he could have put patterns for making masks on the Internet and […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) May 21, 2020 Cucumber Seedlings Transplanted I transplanted my cucumber seedlings this morning. The spacing turned out to be a tad closer than I’d calculated, so I’ll have to add more support rods later. キュウリ苗の植え替え 今朝、キュウリの苗を植え替えた。苗の数は最初の計算より多くあったため、少し間隔を狭めた。後日、支え棒を増やさなければならない。 *********** English novels by Billy Hammond published by AELS (AELS出版英語書籍リスト）   I. Majoh Gakuin and Hikari Juku – Japanese Witch Schools Trilogy 1. Majoh Gakuin & Hikari Juku – Japanese Witch Schools 2. Lost Witch (The second book) 3. Fate & Magic (The final book in the trilogy) II. Brindle – Scryer Extraordinaire Trilogy 1. Brindle – Scryer Extraordinaire 2. Brindle – Scryer Extraordinaire – Returns 3. Brindle – Scryer Extraordinaire – Challenges (The final book in the trilogy) III. Fantasy fiction set in Japan 1. 21st Century Ninja 2. Regressed 3. Japanese Woman IV. Fantasy fiction set outside […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) May 19, 2020 2020: One Hell of a Year Most of you who follow my blog have read my predictions for 2020 (and 2019 probably as well). This year was a difficult year to put into words because of the many bad futures that seemed to be waiting. I made it a point to write down only those with the strongest probabilities of occurring and kept the rest to myself (and believe me, there were a lot of them, including food shortages around the world). Unfortunately, quite a few of my predictions are coming true. I’m hoping that the one about war between the US and China doesn’t. 2020年：大変な年 私のブログ読者は「2020年予測」*を読んだことがあるだと思う（2019年も）。今年の悪い可能性があり過ぎたため透視がとても難しかった。書き留めた予測は視えた可能性の一番強いものだけで、他には『良くない』可能性も沢山あった（例えば食料不足）。 残念ながら、いくつかの予測が実現して来られた。中国とアメリカとの戦争の可能性についてのが外れるように祈っている。 *日本語はブログ記事下にある ************* English novels by Billy Hammond published by AELS (AELS出版英語書籍リスト）   I. Majoh Gakuin and Hikari Juku – Japanese Witch Schools Trilogy 1. […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) May 16, 2020 Japan’s politicians are bickering about the start of the school year, which currently begins in April. Some of them want to switch it to September under the pretext of globalization, but the reality is that the school shut-down due to the Wuhan coronavirus has created a lag in the progress of children’s education that they want to cover up with a shift to a September start. Both systems of starting school attendance in accordance with a preset school year are outdated in this day and age of online education! The child’s birth date should be used as the determinant of when he or she begins school. This would eliminate the current time lag of almost a year between students, which is quite large in developmental psychology. It would give each student a […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) May 10, 2020 I’d been under the impression that the Abe cloth mask fiasco wherein the administration ordered cloth masks for the entire Japanese population and received dirty, substandard masks in children’s sizes was finished when it was revealed that they’d been duped by the manufacturers. Yesterday’s TV news announced that the masks would be delivered this month. Delivery of the masks will cost a huge amount of money in postage charges in a situation where many Japanese hospitals are on the verge of closing due to a lack of money stemming from coronavirus fears keeping patients away. PM Abe should obviously let the issue die, but instead he’s chosen to take a whip to the proverbial horse in an effort to revive it. The Abe mask should be given to the school boards in […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) May 8, 2020 Kawasaki Disease (aka “mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome” and “Kawasaki Syndrome”) has been in the news lately as children with Covid-19 seem to be exhibiting symptoms of the disease in the US and the UK. Kawasaki disease was first described by Tomisaku Kawasaki in 1967. It appears mostly in children between the ages of 3 months to 5 years although it may occur in other age groups as well. It affects more Asians and Pacific Islanders than whites. It is an acute mucocutaneous vasculitis in which vessel walls are infiltrated with mononuclear cells first and later by IgA secreting plasma cells that can destroy the tunica media of vessel walls and induce aneurysm formation. Several infectious agents (New Haven coronavirus, parvovirus, bocavirus, CMV, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, meningococcus), bacterial superantigens, and genetic polymorphisms (confirmed in […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) May 4, 2020 I saw a patient on a ventilator in an ICU ward on TV who was positioned face down. If I hadn’t taken the course in mechanical ventilation from Harvard Medical School, I would have wondered what the reason was for putting a patient in what would seem to be such an unusual position. The weights of the heart, chest wall, abdominal contents, and the lungs themselves exert pressure on the lungs and compress them. This leads to atelectasis and derecruitment. Proning the patient helps maximize the V/Q (ventilation and perfusion ratio) and prevents atelectasis, which is a big problem in Covid-19 and ARDS patients. Thus, the team in the Japanese hospital was taking advantage of the latest research in pulmonary care for Covid-19. The scene impressed me and made me aware of […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) April 30, 2020 Education Reform Chance Japan’s lawmakers are debating changing the start of the school year from April to September. They really should be talking about how to move their educational system into the 21st Century rather than trying to go backwards and repeat the 20th Century. Learning can be carried out for all grades entirely online. For example, the Internet Academy in Washington State offers kindergarten through high school online and is fully accredited. For those who feel they need to use the schools as babysitters, there is the more expensive and cumbersome “blended learning” wherein children can attend the physical schools and do some of their learning online. For more on the subject, you might want to take a look at my blog article, “Online Learning: K-12“. The real question that needs […]